


Echo

by LLReid



Series: Reunited [4]
Category: Bloodbound (Visual Novel)
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, BB3 is disappointing me so here’s a fic I wrote instead of sleeping, F/F, Fluff, Vampire Queens, Vampires, its short af because wine will only get me so far, shower
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-02
Updated: 2020-02-02
Packaged: 2021-02-27 19:33:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,076
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22521055
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LLReid/pseuds/LLReid
Summary: Fic inspired by ‘Echo’ by Jason Walker.An intimate scene that I would have liked to have seen in BB3 Chapter 9 instead of what I’ll be referring to as ‘Paris 2.0’ for the rest of eternity.~~~~~Each of them were aching so much with exhaustion that all they could manage to do was cling to one another, their hearts beating in perfect synchronicity as they stood there beneath the steady stream of warm water. For centuries Kamilah had heard people claim that time had its way of healing all wounds, and to an extent time had its way of easing pain but it didn’t heal all wounds, to claim such a thing would be to presume that the source of the grief that caused the wounds in the first place was finite. They were broken and they were healing, and they’d hopefully have more than enough time to soothe their battle wounds and work out their problems, but for that moment all they could do was breathe through the heartache.
Relationships: Kamilah Sayeed/Anastasia Swann, Kamilah Sayeed/Main Character (Bloodbound)
Series: Reunited [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1608706
Comments: 2
Kudos: 50





	Echo

“I love you, and I will love you until I die, and if there is life after that, I'll love you then as well, to whatever end,” Kamilah said with absolute clarity. Gently, she slipped a single finger beneath Anastasia’s chin and tilted her face upwards so that she was looking into her eyes. “And right now I’m looking at you and I’m just...amazed with everything that I see.”

“You are?,” the younger vampire sniffled. Her big blue eyes were puffy and glassy looking from the tears that she’d shed, yet she was still the most stunningly beautiful woman that Kamilah had ever seen. Even standing there in the shower, soaked and shivering despite the warm water trickling down both of their bodies, she was absolutely everything.

“I know that you’ve been through a lot and you’re frightened, but the way that you’ve been handling everything has made me so proud of you.” Carefully, she smoothed back the wispy strands of flame coloured hair that had matted to her tear soaked face and she brushed her lips against her clammy forehead. “You may be different from the rest of us, but being different is not being wrong.”

“I just— I— I’ve never felt so weak.”

“Being weak and being frightened are not the same thing.” More tears escaped from the trembling girl’s eyes, but Kamilah wiped them away with the pads of her thumbs before they could start tumbling down her ashen face. “You told me earlier that you think you’re the darkness I’ve felt approaching for decades and you asked me if I still want you, as if I could ever stop loving you. As if I would want to give up the one thing that makes me feel stronger than anything else ever has, who makes me the best version of myself that I’m capable of being.” She placed another soft kiss between her eyebrows. “I never dared give this much of myself to anyone before — sure I’ve given tiny bits of myself to others but it took centuries to do it — but, Anastasia, since the first time I saw you I have belonged to you entirely. I still do. I always will.”

The redhead gave her an exhausted smile, but given how worn out she was it was more heartbreaking than comforting. “You could have anyone else in the world, and you still want me.”

“I don’t want anyone else in the world. Only you.”

Anastasia pushed herself up onto her tip toes and pressed her lips against Kamilah’s. The kiss was slow and agonisingly gentle after everything they’d been through since leaving New York. It was exactly what she needed. Chaste. Comforting. A reminder of what they were fighting for.

“What’re you thinking about?,” she prodded, resting her brow against Anastasia’s.

“I was thinking about the first time I ever saw you,” Anastasia replied, “and how after I couldn’t forget you or stop myself from thinking about you. I wanted to, but I couldn’t. Then the more I got to know you, the more I felt it — even with my college girlfriend who I was close to settling down with, it had never been like that for me before. All the other times I’d wanted a girl and then started to get to know her, I’d suddenly not want her anymore, but with you the good feelings just get stronger and stronger.” A shaky sigh escaped from the back of the girl’s throat that had been made hoarse from the well overdue meltdown she’d had the second they were alone together. “I didn’t know that it could be this way, that even after everything that’s going on, you’d still feel like peace to me.”

Kamilah’s expression softened, her carefully built walls turning to ash. It was so unlike her to feel anything at all, never mind to feel so much all at once. She was one of the oldest and most feared vampires in the world, in the eyes of many she was little more than a weapon wearing a suit of skin. Yet in the right hands she melted. She remembered who she might’ve been had Gaius Augustine never manipulated her, had she not been so determined to become a monster in order to bury the grief that had come from losing her brother and her home. She remembered who she really was.

Anastasia mumbled her name as she took her lips on hers once more. Kissing her slowly, deeply. Kamilah had heard people scream her name in terror, in rage, and even in ecstasy more times than she could even begin to remember, yet when Anastasia said it, it sounded different. It sounded beautiful. For her to speak it aloud made the ancient vampire’s heart ring like the bells of Notre-Dam. It was such a strange feeling — an old and bruised heart ringing — but whenever Anastasia was close that was exactly what it was like: as if Kamilah’s heart was ringing in her chest and the sound shivered through her veins and splintered the ice around her heart with nothing but the purest sort of joy.

The redhead in her arms was a dream. Perhaps the very first dream conjured up by Kamilah’s weary soul that she physically couldn’t stop herself from indulging in. From that dream, she knew that more dreams would follow if they could somehow manage to survive Rheya — a lifetime’s worth of dreams would follow.

Each of them were aching so much with exhaustion that all they could manage to do was cling to one another, their hearts beating in perfect synchronicity as they stood there beneath the steady stream of warm water. For centuries Kamilah had heard people claim that time had its way of healing all wounds, and to an extent time had its way of easing pain but it didn’t heal all wounds, to claim such a thing would be to presume that the source of the grief that caused the wounds in the first place was finite. They were broken and they were healing, and they’d hopefully have more than enough time to soothe their battle wounds and work out their problems, but for that moment all they could do was breathe through the heartache.

In her long life, Kamilah had learned time and again that there are far too many ways to be brave in this world than is possible to count. Sometimes bravery involved laying down your life for something bigger than yourself, or for someone else — like Anastasia had done so selflessly that terrible night in The Met. Sometimes it involved giving up and walking away from everything you have ever known, or everyone you have ever loved, for the sake of something that had the potential to be much greater.

But sometimes it was neither of those things. Bravery was particularly odd like that.

Sometimes it was nothing more than gritting your teeth through unspeakable amounts of pain, and the uncertainty that came with the work of everyday, the slow crawl toward a better life. 

That was the sort of bravery Kamilah knew that they each needed to have now.

“Kami?”

“Mhm?”

Anastasia leaned back a little so that she was looking her in the eyes. “Are you scared?”

Kamilah sighed and nodded once, the gesture small and tight. “You know that feeling,” she said, “when you’re reading a novel, and you know that it is going to be a tragedy; you can feel the darkness coming, see the noose drawing tight around the character’s necks? But you’re tied to the story and you can’t walk away or do anything to turn the course aside.” Anastasia’s blue eyes were dark with understanding — she was the one person that Kamilah knew would understand, who she could be honest with. She was old enough to know that being fearless wasn’t the point of life. That was an impossible goal. Learning how to control your fear was the point, and then learning how to free yourself from it. “I feel now as if that is happening in real life. Not because I feel intimidated by your power or because I think you’re the darkness, because I don’t. I just don’t want to sit by whilst tragedy comes for us. I want to fix it. I want to go back to our normal lives. I only struggle to come up with a solution as to how that may be done.”

“You’re scared for our friends?”

“Yes,” she nodded. “And I fear for you, too.”

“Don’t waste that on me, Kami,” Anastasia said, quietly.

“I’ve already lost you once before. If you haven’t already noticed, I’m apocalyptically in love with you. Losing you was a pain that I was incapable of baring the first time, my love. I wouldn’t survive it a second time.” The way Kamilah looked at her then was so intense that Anastasia’s breath audibly hitched in her throat. She loved her so much that she’d set the world ablaze in order to keep her, she’d do anything, be anything. “Do you understand that? If anything were to happen to you, I won’t get over you. I won’t survive it. I can’t.”

“Kamilah, you’re stronger than you think. When someone leaves this world, everything else gets jostled because of the empty space. You’re gonna land in the wrong spot for a while. Sooner or later, you’ll find where you fit again—“

“That is usually the case...but losing you broke my heart into thousands of pieces. I didn’t think there would’ve been any coming back from it.”

“I understand.” The redhead nodded and soothingly stroked her hands up and down her sides. They were already standing as close to one another as was physically possible but the soothing movements of her hands made her feel even closer. “Since I've met you, everything I've done and everything I’ve become has been in part because of you. I can’t lose you either, alright? You have to survive this, too. I can’t be separated from you, Kamilah — not my heart or my soul or my mind or my blood or any other parts of me that might exist. We need each other.”

“Some small part of me still tells me that all of this is my fault. I know you don’t blame me for any of it, but I'm sorry.”

“For what?”

“For all of it.” She sighed. “For failing to keep you safe. For turning you. For not killing Gaius back in the 1920s. All of it.”

“None of that. It’s not your fault,” Anastasia cooed with a gentle kiss on her chin. “If people went around apologising for every bad thing that happened to everyone else, we’d all be bored out of our fucking skulls.”

Kamilah huffed, an equally irritated and amused smile playing across her face. “In the fourteen months that I've known you, there's always been only one place I want to be, and I’ve always fought like hell to make sure I get there and stay there. I haven’t always been successful but I try — harder than I’ve ever tried at anything — and I’ll continue fighting for it, to whatever end.”

"Where's that?"

"Wherever you are.” Kamilah caressed Anastasia’s face in her hands like the most fragile treasure. She couldn’t quite believe she was doing what she was doing, saying what she was saying, feeling so damn much for this wonderful woman. But it was clear as crystal that she was her home, clear as the icy blue irises gazing back at her with nothing but love reflected in their piercing stare. “I don’t know what’ll happen when we meet with Kano or when we return to New York...but if we don’t survive it and there is a life after this one let me meet you in it, Anastasia Swann.”

“You don’t have to worry, Kami. There will be other lives...I’m sure of it.” Anastasia reached up and caressed Kamilah’s face and gently drew her down so that their brows were pressed together. Anastasia had always been the brighter burning star, the one to catch attention — but Kamilah was a steady flame, unwavering and honest. Complete opposites, and yet they both had war inside of them. Sometimes it kept them alive. Sometimes it threatened to destroy them. But they had each other, and they made each other unspeakably happy. “Whatever happens, we’ll fight like hell. When we rise or fall, we’ll do it together.”

\- fin.


End file.
